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The Effect Of Interruptions During A Laparoscopy Skills Training Task, Brandon Allan Fluegel

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The goal of the present study was to examine how interruptions during a laparoscopic skills training task affected task performance. Undergraduate students completed a task that required them to pick up and transfer colored objects in a specific, predetermined sequence. The number of colored objects in the sequence was varied to produce three levels of task demand. During execution of the primary task, participants were interrupted by auditory task-irrelevant communication. The temporal length of interruptions was also manipulated to produce three levels of interruption duration. Results showed that participants made significantly more sequence errors in the high demand condition than …